Digital video recorders (DVRs), also known as “personal video recorders (PVRs),” e.g., TiVo and ReplayTV devices, are popular nowadays, stemming from their capabilities of “pausing”, “rewinding” and “fast-forwarding” live television (TV) broadcast while it is being recorded. They may also offer such other functions as “one-touch programming” for automatically recording every episode of a show for an entire season, “commercial advance” for automatically skipping through commercials while watching recorded broadcast, an “on-screen guide” for looking up recorded programs to view, etc. The DVRs may also suggest programs for recording based on a user's viewing habit.
With the advent of digital communications technology, many TV broadcast streams are transmitted in digital formats. For example, Digital Satellite System (DSS), Digital Broadcast Services (DBS), and Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC) broadcast streams are digitally formatted pursuant to the well known Moving Pictures Experts Group 2 (MPEG-2) standard. The MPEG-2 standard specifies, among others, the methodologies for video and audio data compressions which allow multiple programs, with different video and audio feeds, to be multiplexed in a transport stream traversing a single broadcast channel. A digital TV receiver may be used to decode an MPEG-2 encoded transport stream, and extract the desired program therefrom. The prior art DVRs take advantage of MPEG-2 compression of video and audio data to maximize use of their limited storage capacity.